The failure of a marriage is often a slow, creeping affair. In Zeruya Shalev's new novel, Late Family, a woman decides to put a sudden end to this tormenting process, which resembles a gradual poisoning. Overnight, she separates from her husband and asks him to leave their apartment. She is left with their child and becomes consumed by thoughts and doubts. This is the novel of a crisis. A crisis that strikes the heroine—a self-sufficient, confident woman—like a proverbial bolt from the blue. The long-awaited freedom seemed finally within reach; instead, she finds herself confronted with a paralyzing fear of profound loneliness, depression, and the terrible feeling of having taken her child's father, their family, away from them. The realization is also deeply moving.